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mastodon / mastodon

Your self-hosted, globally interconnected microblogging community
https://joinmastodon.org
GNU Affero General Public License v3.0
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Give Mastodon Instances a customizable homepage #20786

Open psydwannabe opened 2 years ago

psydwannabe commented 2 years ago

Pitch

Mastodon instances have long had to rely on either forking the entire project and writing custom code just to get a non-logged-in homepage for their userbase. Mastodon 4 made any non-code-fork-based customizations impossible by forcing a timeline view, removing HTML support from the server description field and restricting that field to 200 characters. Now all Mastodon instance homepages look identical, and culture and community customizations are impossible without a code fork.

Motivation

The more an instance can customize its landing page, the more it can be used to market an instance to would-be users. Mastodon as a platform has given us fewer and fewer customization options since its release, and now with 4.0, we're given a single image and 200 characters of description text.

This was not an upgrade, this was a downgrade, and our instances deserve better than this.

egypturnash commented 2 years ago

YES.

I have been running an instance since 2017. When I set it up I extensively customized the front page to make it a place for my friends (https://web.archive.org/web/20190413165458/dragon.style/about). I swore a lot when migrating this through a few versions; I never got around to replacing it when I had to upgrade to 3.4.6 for a crucial bug because something in my custom CSS just refused to compile and I needed to get back to drawing stuff that paid my bills instead of swearing at Webpack.

I do not want to run a generic node of Mastodon. I want to run a particular node with a particular aesthetic, for a particular set of people. I do not want to give any random passer-by a view of what is trending across the network; I want a sign that politely tells them who we are and where to go to inquire for more information if they are sufficiently dedicated.

anampses commented 2 years ago

I beg the Mastodon devs to revert the changes to the server description field. Please.... the 200 character limit is no where near enough and I absolutely need HTML support added back.

todoneunl commented 2 years ago

See also this issue: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/20930, what is a major security flaw. How does not anybody raised a red flag during development!?